IRIS MURDOCH. 1919-1999 “The Sea, the Sea” “The Black Prince”
HAPPINESS is a matter of one’s most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
ONE OF THE SECRETS of a happy life is continuous small treats and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.
WE LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
FOR MOST OF US, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
THERE IS NO BEYOND, THERE IS ONLY HERE, THE INFINITELY SMALL, INFINITELY GREAT AND UTTERLY DEMANDING PRESENT.
LANGUAGE IS A MACHINE FOR MAKING FALSEHOODS.
PEOPLE FROM A PLANET WITHOUT FLOWERS would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
THE BICYCLE is the most civilized conveyance know to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
JACQUES DERIDA. 1930-2004. “Grammatology” “Of Hospitality”
ONE OFTEN SPEAKS WITHOUT SEEING, without knowing, without meaning what one says.
LEARNING TO LIVE ought to mean learning to die — to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality — without positive outcome, or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.
PSYCHOANALYSIS has taught that the dead — a dead parent, for example — can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.
WE ARE ALL MEDIATORS, TRANSLATORS.
TO PRETEND, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.
THE POET . . . is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs . . . the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.
EVERYTHING is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.
AS SOON AS THERE IS LANGUAGE, GENERALITY HAS ENTERED THE SCENE.
BEAUTY ONLY HAPPENS ONCE.
I SAY THINGS THAT CONTRADICT EACH OTHER, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die.
I DO EVERYTHING I think possible or acceptable to escape from this trap.
ACTUALLY, WHEN I WRITE, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write,
WALTER BENJAMIN. 1892-1940. “illuminations”
HISTORY BREAKS DOWN INTO IMAGES, NOT INTO STORIES.
EVERY MONUMENT OF CIVILIZATION is a monument of barbarism.
ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE takes the form of interpretation.
THE ONLY WAY OF KNOWING A PERSON IS TO LOVE THEM WITHOUT HOPE.
THE WORK OF MEMORY COLLAPSES TIME.
TO BE HAPPY is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
WE COLLECT BOOKS in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.
THE CAMERA introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.
THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are ‘status quo’ is the catastrophe.
COUNSEL WOVEN into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
YOU COULD TELL A LOT ABOUT A MAN by the books he keeps — his tastes, his interests, his habits.
NEVER STOP WRITING BECAUSE YOU HAVE RUN OUT OF IDEAS.
OPINIONS are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
THE TRADITION of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
CAPITALISM is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS AND GET ON THE LOVE TRAIM AND BEST WISHES TO EVERYONE!